Evaluating the predictive validity of behavioral signatures in situational judgment tests

This study assesses behavioral signatures (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) in Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs), which provide the opportunity to not only capture individuals’ average behavior but also evaluate their patterns of behavioral fluctuations across SJT items (i.e., “behavioral signatures”). We tested the idea that these behavioral signatures enhance the prediction of future behavior beyond mean level scores. Data were collected from 255 participants who completed a 110-item SJT, consisting of 22 items for a facet of each Big Five dimension respectively. Our findings suggest that, indeed, behavioral signatures of Openness to ideas (a facet of Openness to experience) explain unique variance in the prediction of final secondary grades in Math and German, as well as GPA.